Credit: Mark Hancock Afghanistan, 2011: In a war lasting more than 10 years, troops of Oklahoma’s 45th Infantry Brigade, the successors to the storied World War II unit and now a brigade numbering about 3,000, deployed into combat. By their return in March of this year, 14 had died and nearly 1,000 were injured. “The […]
iraq
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‘Collateral’ soldier
U.S. Army veteran Ethan McCord’s actions on July 12, 2007, have been seen throughout the world. Now the Iraq war veteran is coming to Oklahoma to talk about what he witnessed firsthand. McCord is one of the more prominent, if not heroic, figures featured in the so-called Collateral Murder video, which shows a U.S. helicopter […]
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Manning up
You know the guy. In what’s considered one of the biggest classified information leaks in U.S. history, Manning is accused of sending thousands of classified military documents and information — including the so-called collateral murder video and thousands of diplomatic cables — to the website WikiLeaks. Manning, who was arrested in Iraq in 2010 and […]
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Remembering Anthony Shadid
That easy laughter made me underestimate him. Later, when we were both studying journalism at colleges out of state, we met up two or three times for beers over Christmas break. I remember being surprised and impressed by his passion in discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This guy is going places, I thought to myself. And […]
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Exploring ambiguity
One of the biggest stories of Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Shadid’s life is the one he never wrote. In March 2002, while covering the increasing violence in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Shadid was shot in the left shoulder. The bullet damaged some of his vertebrae before exiting his right shoulder, and instead of turning […]
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‘A little bit unreal’
As a fellow reporter, Said al-Ghazali, struggled to help him, Shadid wrote later in the Columbia Journalism Review that his thoughts flew to his wife and daughter, and of how useless words are when facing what could be one’s final moment. “In the anarchy of emotions and impulses that ensued, I could only come up […]
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Food stamps and munchies
It’s true that many people in society use alcohol and overeating to help medicate themselves. Why not add drugs to the list? The billions of dollars that formerly went toward drug enforcement could be used to help fund the food stamp program. Sitting around all day smoking weed can leave one pretty hungry. A word […]